


know it on the inside

by PurpleLex



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Karen POV, Light Angst, Post-Episode: s01e08 The Defenders, The Defenders (Marvel TV) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-18 19:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11881677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PurpleLex/pseuds/PurpleLex
Summary: Gray sky, gray water, gray concrete beneath her heels. He slides into the seat beside her with more grace than should be possible for someone capable of so much turmoil and her eyes follow unwittingly to the split above his brow when he removes the ball cap. There's something almost polite in the gesture.Or maybe it's simply a pain to wear that all the time while he masquerades as just another civilian on the street."The meth-heads give that to you?" Karen asks first.He turns his head then after setting the cap down next to his thigh, a divider in the distance between them. Not that it's necessary. There was already enough space for another person to sit, enough space to make doing something as intimate as whispering all but impossible. His voice is rough as she avoids him, looks to the lapping river. "You've been following."





	know it on the inside

**Author's Note:**

> This was spawned after finishing The Defenders so there's major spoilers for that, of course. I love how new canon completely obliterates fanfiction written like literally the day before, lol! Ah well. I'm even more excited and hyped to explore how the kastle dynamic will be different in The Punisher though, so this is a poor attempt at doing that myself. I'm not quite sure what this is really but I hope you enjoy it anyway! Thanks for reading!!
> 
> (Title is a reference to the song Human by Aquilo btw~!)

 

 

Frank Castle sweeps back into her life with all the shock of a winter storm mingled within the ease of a summer breeze. Not a bone in her body is ready for this. For _him_.

She's desperate to hate him for it as soon as he's opening his mouth and has her eyes snapping to his, hidden the way he is in the shadows of an alley, melting out of his visage as a homeless man she'd attempted to pass some empathy and a couple bucks. It would serve him right for her to reject it all immediately.

Despite what he does, despite the way he pushed her away so coldly before, it would be a lie if she denied keeping track his activities. Searching out every report someone else has drawn up about his kill of the day. Curiosity is a terrible thing, after all, but Karen's getting better at controlling it. Limiting it. She reads and she keeps it at that, careful not to step back up to the door he closed.

She'd only be hurting herself when he doesn't answer the knocking.

Except that now he's jerked that door open while her back was turned to it and stands there, wanting and eager for attention. She isn't as sweetly delusional as she wants to be, though. She knows he's not there for her. Not really.

She trades words sharp as knives, feels the flushes of anger swirling with hurt crawling its way along her neck, but she ends up taking the note with its scribbled address regardless.

It's not out of curiosity, though. The reason is much more pathetic than that.

 

* * *

 

Gray sky, gray water, gray concrete beneath her heels. He slides into the seat beside her with more grace than should be possible for someone capable of so much turmoil and her eyes follow unwittingly to the split above his brow when he removes the ball cap. There's something almost polite in the gesture.

Or maybe it's simply a pain to wear that all the time while he masquerades as just another civilian on the street.

"The meth-heads give that to you?" Karen asks first.

He turns his head then after setting the cap down next to his thigh, a divider in the distance between them. Not that it's _necessary_. There was already enough space for another person to sit, enough space to make doing something as intimate as whispering all but impossible. His voice is rough as she avoids him, looks to the lapping river. "You've been following."

"Everyone reads about The Punisher," she dismisses with a sigh. "And when you end up on the front page of my paper, it's hard to avoid. Which happens a lot, you know.... You keep busy."

Frank digests that with a steadily nodding head, scanning the warehouses around them almost absently.

She wonders how far his paranoia stretches, wonders if it's gotten worse. It doesn't seem like it has but maybe she's catching him on a good day. Maybe she hasn't given him enough time to reveal how much farther he's fallen into that pit of despair she's far too familiar with.

"Thought you might be the one writing those by now, ma'am."

It would be obnoxiously easy to ask how much he's read of her work. "Not about The Punisher," she says instead as her gaze lowers. A part of her begs for him to make some acknowledgment of her first piece. The nod to the city. The one nod she has made to Frank Castle.

"Job suits you a hell of a lot more than that secretary desk."

It's neutral, but it's almost a compliment.

It's too much.

" _Stop_.... Just tell me what you want."

Leaning forward suddenly, he props his elbows on his knees and levels a stare at her. It's intense enough to bruise. She swallows, only watching him out of the corner of her eye. "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't out of options, alright.... You can go places I can't. Dig up shit hidden where I can't touch. City records, police records, that kind of shit. Just names, public organizations. Nothing deep. That's it."

She clenches her teeth. "You need an errand girl, that's what you're saying. That's how you show back up, you ambush me with promises of explanation-"

"I didn't-"

"You said _'let's talk'._ How else was I gonna take that, after everything?" Karen can't help scoffing a laugh. It rings painfully.

Frank folds his fists around each other, tapping finger to knuckle as he leans closer. Accidentally closing the distance. "Explanation for what part, huh? What do you need? I gotta go in detail about the bodies I've strung up, _how good it feels,_ before you get it?"

"What about Kandahar?" His head's less than a foot from hers and she realizes she has overestimated the amount of air between them by the time she's pulled her head from where it laid ducked against her chest, by the time she's met his stare and found it searching. The same passionate conviction of six months ago weighs on his face now.

It draws her in, makes her reckless.

"You find the answers you were looking for?"

"This ain't about that." He's got a growl in his voice now.

It's a warning she ignores. "Everything you're doing is gonna be about that, one way or another. I know you."

A muscle jumps along his jaw. "Stop fishing, ma'am. This ain't another story you get to tell."

The sounds of slamming and a gunshot echo in her ears. "... _Wow_. You- you really think that's what this is? Why I'm asking?"

Gaze flickering with torn depths, he stands, a restrained animal tugging at his leash with the urge to pace. He resists but only just, waiting. Waiting on her.

There might just be some guilt there too, a glimpse of a curtain over his face before she'd had to turn her head to hide moist eyes and he'd stood up. Whatever side conversation they might've been able to hold is over now. He won't ask again but she's not the type to need a begging man in order to pause in consideration.

The fact that he's asking for something at all betrays how much he needs it despite the desire not to. It's written all over his face, the look of a man hunting for an escape in a locked room, uncomfortable and frustrated. She wants to think it's not her that's repulsing him, that he's simply bulking at the reminder of the past she threw in his face. The reminder that there's still one person in this world who cares for him despite everything he does.

Nevertheless, it all forms a lump in her throat she has to clear away.

Ellison professed a lesson to her only a month earlier about the difference between need and want, professionally. _"If you can't sleep it off or control it, that's when you know you've struck on something. But you already know that part,"_ he'd said with a shrug. _"What you need to learn is the balancing act."_

_"I've met every deadline."_

_"Yeah, you have, and every time you've had one you want to write up get rejected or fall out of your hands, you start acting like this office is a cave to mourn in. I get it, Page, I've been there. It's shit. But what you want isn't always gonna be what the paper needs. So, I'm strongly recommending against the practice of alcohol or you're risking turning out like me, but -- and this is an order from your boss -- look for something else. Some happy place. Or you'll burn out before you can cash in your yearly bonus."_

Karen looks at Frank now, watches him glance her way as if he's lost for words, and wonders if the opposite is true. If she can apply it to herself. Maybe something she needs isn't something she particularly wants, not like this, but the outcome will be the same.

She reaches into her bag for her notebook. Because it's Frank, because he's here at all and she'll regret doing otherwise, she relents without looking at him again. "What do you need?"

 

* * *

 

He brings coffee. _Two cups._

"Is this my payment?" She asks, exhausted enough to relax when she hears his boots.

He scoffs at her words as she takes the offer in hand. It's the strongest brew she's had in her life, stronger even than her own that Foggy had the friendly decency to admit is firmly more gruel than gold. It could use a drop of sugar she thinks as she wonders at the standard Greek print on the paper.

"Where'd you get this? It's good."

Frank grunts out a street corner. A street corner that stands a mere three blocks from The Bulletin.

She thinks of all the time he's been out of sight, off her personal radar with firm intent. And then how he knew exactly where and when to surprise her in a way that seamlessly fit within her routine. Maybe her thought is the truth, maybe it isn't, but above all else maybe it's not worth knowing either way.

She brushes it off as if it's something of mere coincidence and sets the coffee on the ground before opening her bag.

He doesn't lean forward today, doesn't push. It's not as if he has to.

All but one of the names, some defunct corporate outlet, she was able to hunt down a few layers beyond basic information. She tells him as much.

"This is enough. Thank you, ma'am." Voice soft, hands taking with gentle touch, she's not sure what she expected but this wasn't it. Not exactly.

Karen nods and pushes her wind-whipped hair back. "Yeah, well. You're welcome." She watches him tuck the papers into his coat. "Hope you find what you're looking for."

Maybe he moves to say something, maybe he doesn't, but she's already standing. There's a sudden urge to reach out. He's sporting a splotch of indigo from an uppercut stretching beyond the hidden shadows of his beard that wasn't there a week ago and she wants to tilt his head, get a better look at it.

That curiosity was something she'd kept reeled in tight but in the past month it'd become almost unbearable to do so. It was hard to ignore the ever-reaching loneliness, to block him from coming to mind every time she felt the urge to talk to someone, _really talk to someone._ To feel valued and accepted and understood for everything she is.

But the clock couldn't be rewound, no matter how much you wished for it. The universe just kept finding ways to remind Karen of that.

Panic seeps underneath her skin.

She steps away.

 

* * *

 

Her phone buzzes a quick twelve days later.

It's her blessed day off, a day of pulled curtains and burrowed covers, which means there's only person that would be calling. She slides her phone open without facing the sunlight that's managed to stream in with a few thin rays. "I was _sleeping_ , Foggy."

"Not the lawyer, but sorry about that."

She blinks fully awake this time. "Frank.... Hi."

After she'd carefully stuck a post-it note with her phone number on the back of the papers, doubt had quickly festered. There was no good reason for why she'd done it. Part of the deal, at least on his end when he'd presented it to her, was about it being a one time thing. One time contact and afterwards he would return to the ghost of a shadow she sometimes looked twice for after midnight falls across the city.

She hadn't expected anything differently. She'd just done it anyway.

Silence keeps hold of the line between them for a long minute.

Frank breaks it this time. "You busy?"

 

* * *

 

He's already in a back booth of the old diner when she enters. She spies him right away, bell still jingling out it's chime over the door. The hat's pulled low over his eyes, too, but as soon as she's sat down he pops it up a bit with a flick of fingers.

"Hungry?"

"Coffee's usually the extent of my breakfast," she replies.

He might just start to smile at that but it's here and gone before Karen can be sure, waitress responding to the hand he lifts by bringing another cup. She leaves a carafe and menu despite protestations against the latter.

"You come here a lot?" Karen asks, nodding to the pot.

"They don't ask questions."

"Probably because they already _know_."

Frank only gulps down more caffeine with a shrug.

Staring down at her own, she thinks of one of her last conversations with Matt. An assurance about crime statistics, about the police, about Daredevil making a difference.

She was trying to make him feel better, yes, but it was true. It just wasn't the whole story. Daredevil helped the police - and that paved the way for The Punisher. That 50/50 split on how to treat the murdering vigilante was more heavily tilted towards letting the man carry on with his agenda these days. She heard it from both Brett and from her anonymous badge-toting sources. It was plain to see in every crime report he'd been responsible for.

Had she only grated against Matt's willpower with those words? Or was that willpower simply denial?

She wonders, not for the first time, what she missed in Matt.

What the warning signs were, if there were any in the first place. Who he really was as Daredevil. It was all too easy before to think she understood him, but when the mask and man collided into one being for her, so much of what she took as fact fell apart before her very eyes.

" _Hey_." Frank's staring at her, tone quiet. She realizes then that she's all but curled herself over the mug in her hands. The heat of it's clay might just be burning skin.

She straightens and pulls her hands away, leaning her forearms against the side of the table instead. "So, uh. Why here? Why'd you call?"

"Why'd you leave your number?" He counters. Brown eyes keep searching her, raking over her face and bouncing between her eyes, sparing only a few seconds every minute to scan their surroundings.

Karen tucks her hair back. "I don't know," she sighs. Honest.

He doesn't stop searching.

"You... you were suddenly here, again, and maybe I've been driven crazy after this past shitty year, but I.... I'm...." She licks her lips and ducks her head. "It was a one-time thing and it's not like I want it to be more, okay, because I'm not. I'm happy where I'm at. But... you came back, and I just. I just couldn't say _goodbye_ , so. So that's what it was. Me, not saying goodbye."

She takes a shuddering breath and dares to look up. He's tipped his hat higher, high enough now for her to fully see once more how bright his eyes can be.

It's intense enough to feel like a hold.

She opens herself up to it, risks dropping her walls.

"I heard what happened, with, uh...." Frank starts, catches himself. "Murdock.... I'm sorry."

The words come out stilted like scratches on a record but the emotion's plain to see. She's grateful. "I know who he was, what he did. You don't have to worry about exposing a dead man's secret."

He nods.

Karen waits for more. Waits for him to expand on that apology, waits for him to draw it back to her confession and how wrong she is or for him to tell her that he only called her out to warn against thinking there's anything more here. That there might be another chance at whatever the hell this is. She'd almost dare to call it friendship.

Nothing else comes as the sounds of the diner rise around them.

She lets out a soft breath, picks up her coffee again. Her stomach growls.

Frank smirks and it brings an easy smile to her face she'd started to be fearful of losing for good.

"Alright, fine.... You know what's good here?"

 

* * *

 

They part and come back together with a fluctuating frequency that is entirely dependent on how many all-nighters either of them are pulling that particular week. They don't have any grand discussions about what it means but eventually he's bringing up her stories like it's small-talk and some of her questions about his latest brutalities are give answers, conversations held more often in darkness than sunlight, devoid of judgment on both sides.

No goodbyes are given so there's no real end. It doesn't change enough to be a new beginning, either.

There's no such thing as an easy answer for something so complicated.

It's after 4AM by the time she's clicking off the lights of The Bulletin, well aware that the early-risers will come trickling in soon behind her, but she doesn't go home. She heads to the river.

Frank's there, pacing the edge like he'd promised he would be an hour ago. He passes his coffee to her.

One sip has her nose scrunching at the bitter cold of it before she's handing it back, catching the glint of amusement in his eyes.

"You finally shaved," she observes. "That beard was awful."

"Scared a good number of shitbags with it. Called me _crazy_."

She hums at the almost sadistic fondness he holds there.

Understanding doesn't necessarily mean supporting, that's what she tells herself. If the legal system always worked right, if the world always spun without wobbling, then a Frank Castle in prison would be a must. It's not acceptable, what he's doing, and she doesn't like it, doesn't like seeing the way his knuckles hold fresh bruises today either, but she can't act too high and mighty herself.

Can't pretend it doesn't serve a purpose.

And she can't stop herself from helping him whenever he asks or, more importantly, every time that he _doesn't_ , too.

Karen shivers against the wind. "I need some fresh coffee."

Frank throws his thermos in his bag and she waits for him to sling it over his shoulder before walking together.

 

 

 


End file.
